To Rise And Fall
by duchess-susan
Summary: Aziraphale falls; Crowley runs across town to find him, only to discover that sauntering downwards isn't the same for everyone. Slight angst.


Crowley feels it from the cafe near Hyde Park where he's been watching joggers and dog-walkers alike trip over (a result of his cunning, as well as a small collection of self-sacrificing twigs).

It makes his trivial, garden-evil, minor misfortunes seem petty.

It makes the world seem petty.

The Bentley, having never before let him down, just won't move fast enough. Like an ember in his mind, insistent, burning, painful, glowing, he knows where he must go. Mortals be damned, they won't go there anyway. It's a place for those Above and Below now, consecrated by a Fall, no longer a place In Between feet will tread. Not while the Fallen is still there, at any rate.

And the Fallen is still very much there. Crowley wants to howl at the ridiculous speed dial. Who is physics _for, _anyway?

It's an alley. A rather clean one, but, nevertheless, an alley. The (recently) Fallen perches upon the steps of a fire-escape, clutching the step he sits on, white-knuckled. Crowley sees those taunt, tense hands, just as he sees the loose set of the mouth, the little wrinkles stressing the eyes, the knees held tight together in an attitude of defensive retreat from the outer environs.

It's not Aziraphale, and it is. The Fall hasn't changed his blonde curls, teasingly boyish and pleasantly disarrayed. But his posture is not the comfortable, assured stance Crowley had been so used to. The hands aren't every second minute travelling to the mouth to check for smears of cream, or whatever foodstuffs the angel had been recently indulging in, around his lips.

Crowley doesn't even want to start on the eyes.

'Azir-' he begins, unsure of how he will progress but unable to let the silence stand.

'No.' The angel-that-was interrupts. 'Not that. Not now. I'm.' He falters. His face twists in confusion, and Crowley for a moment can tell himself it's his angel confronting a particularly dense passage of Milton. The moment, the delusion, shimmers, stretches, and breaks when he continues. 'I'm Nezel.'

_Oh boy. '_Nezel?' Crowley tries to laugh it off. After all, he's a demon. Technically they are on the same side now, not that they've bothered with sides for a while now, but still. No need for anything to be wrong. 'Dear lord, you could have chosen a better name. You and Beelzebub can form a club for ridiculously named...' The word "demon" clings to his tongue, coats the roof of his mouth with copper, makes his teeth feel ill-fitting in his clumsy mouth. And still he tells himself that once Aziraphale is over the shock-because that's all this is, a kind of celestial shock-things will be fine again. As normal again.

'Hell has really done a number on me,' the newly-renamed Nezel says, a quirk to his lips, a shine in his eye, betraying Aziraphale. 'As you would say.'

_But I didn't. I wasn't going to mention Hell at all. Really. I was going to talk about names and the stupid, stupid speed dial and how maybe we should go find a cafe, for old time's sake. But I didn't say any of that either, did I? _Crowley tried to smile. 'You beat me to it,' he teased, voice thin and strained.

'Oh dear, so I did.' Azir- Nezel's smirk set his teeth on edge. Too familiar, and too warped into strangeness. And the eyes above weren't smirking; they were half-fevered, panicking, struggling to the keep the mind behind coherent. Celestial shock. That was it. Of course it hadn't been like this for him, he had sauntered down at pretty much his own pace. Which nudged his mind uncomfortably, inexorably, towards whatever Aziraphale had done in order to become Nezel. The question, insistent and horrible though it was, was too nightmarish; rather that allow itself to be spoken into tangibility it insisted on remaining un-vocalised but unavoidable, a dark shadow haunting corners and unguarded moments.

'How...how are you finding it?' It sounded so inadequate.

'Oh, I'm adjusting.' Nezel leant forward, his tone playfully conspiratorial. 'I know you can't see it right now, but my wings...why they've quite changed. And have you seen my eyes?' He widens them and Crowley feels the inexplicable urge to ram his pointy, brutal fist into that coy-but-innocent, Nezel-but-Aziraphale, wrong-but-right face.

He hisses as he realises Nezel knows it. Knows what his urges command him to do, and knows that Crowley knows he knows. After all, the face isn't so very altered, and he could read the nuances of Aziraphale's expressions as easily as he could...as he could locate ducks in the park, his brain supplied wildly, unable to think of anything more sensible.

'Aren't they different?' Nezel chuckles, raising a hand from its clamped state on the stair and covering his mouth. 'Do you like them, dear? I shan't have them changed again, I shouldn't think. So you'd probably be best advised to be pleasant regarding them.'

'Are you ssserious?' Crowley couldn't stop slurring his sibilants if he'd wanted to-and as it happened, he wants to, very badly-it's too detestably demonic.

'Deadly so.' Nezel stood, unfolding from his hunched, protective stance and facing Crowley, unashamed and seemingly unrepentant. 'What, you expected only the superficial to have changed? I _Fell. _All your glib, oh-so-clever comments about having become a demon through a series of more or less blameless accidents ...Falling isn't like that. You _lied.' _The last word was half venom, half helplessness, and entirely broken. 'You lied,' he repeated softly.

'I glossed over. I hardly thought you needed, or wanted, the blow by blow account. Anyway, I wasn't the best angel to begin with.' Crowley was struggling. Nezel seemed to flip too fast between teasingly demonic and desperately bitter.

Nezel laughed, but the unpleasant edge was gone. When he did it his eyes closed for a second and Crowley couldn't avoid thinking of him as "the angel".

'I'm sorry. This demon...thing, it gets to one. So quickly.' The eyes flicked open, and for the first time even they had a certain Aziraphale-like cast. 'Really, the Falling was a mere formality, I truly didn't suspect I'd end up in Hell _before _I...descended.'

Crowley had no words, How had he not known? How had he not marked the angel's absence? Oh, they went years without seeing each other, sometimes, but recently the Arrangement had been more frequently honoured.

He should have known. If he had, surely something could have been done. He was _good _at pissing off the high-ups-they'd think it was just another of his rebellious impulses. A slapped wrist and he would be on his way. He took a step towards Nezel, hissing with something other than anger. 'I ssshould have guessed. Ssshould have gone Below. Ssshould have sssaved you.' Another step. Nezel was staring at him in astonishment.

'Crowley...' the ex-angel began.

'No. I could have ssorted ssomething-'

'Crowley-' Nezel's voice hadn't changed. Still the same as it had been when it had lectured him on ineffable plans and the role of coasters in civilised society.

A last step, and he was only inches away. 'Stop objecting. I know I could have. I know the system. I could have cheated it.'

'Crowley.' Nezel said it with soft finality. Crowley realised that tears had started dripping down Nezel's face, trickling from his bastardised eyes. Well, that wasn't very demonic. 'Oh, Crowley.' And Crowley realised he had stopped hissing, without even trying. A wind had picked up in the alley, localised and fierce, but though it ruffled him with insolent fingers, Nezel went untouched.

But, in the end, it was the way Nezel looked at him that did it. He understood. He panicked. At last, at last, they were on the same side, they could associate freely without getting criticised by their superiors and, after a while, Nezel would be just like Aziraphale, back to normal. And it was going to be taken away, and all Nezel could do was smile and gaze at him as though he'd never see him again.

The wind took him in the chest, and he screamed. 'Aziraphale!'

But there was nothing to be done. He rose. And he Rose.


End file.
